Today has been a bit annoying.
My modest goal for the day was to get my clothes washed. This is always a challenge — usually I haul a giant laundry bag on the metro (attracting the ever watchful eye of bomb-wary passengers) down to Orchard Road to the ONE PLACE IN SINGAPORE that offers wash-dry-fold service with less than a 4-day turnaround. (Why am I in such a hurry? Because if I waited 4 days for my clothes I would have to own twice as many clothes. Why don’t I wash my clothes myself? Because there are no coin-laundries in Singapore. Doesn’t the yacht club offer laundry service? Yes it does, but not to me. Reasons unclear.)
So, anyway, I trucked down to the ONE PLACE IN SINGAPORE that does same day laundry. It’s called ‘Laundry Day’ and it’s a 45-minute trip, but the folks that run it are very friendly, and it’s next door to a nice noodle shop. They will be closed all week, it turns out. (Probably holiday-related… Saturday was Lunar New Year.) I sat down and did some googling, and located a vague internet rumor about a second laundry place (possible coin laundry!) a mile or so away, so I hiked up there hauling my increasingly-heavy bag. Alas, in keeping the spirit of constant renewal, the address is no longer there and has been replaced by a high-rise construction site. Optimistically I asked for directions from a passerby, and he pointed out that there was a sign advertising laundry service barely visible through the window of a shopping complex across the street, so I headed over there. In the shopping center there’s a nice shoe-repair shop with two little counters, one for cobbling and one for laundry. The cobbler (predictably) offered to have my laundry done in four days. Then he sent me on a wild-goose-chase to a different rumored laundry in the same shopping complex which I never found. (I would say that 50% of the stalls in the building were either maid-service employment agencies or overseas-remittance counters. So that’s how normal Singaporeans get their laundry done.)
I should mention here that Singapore will never let you sink too deeply into despair. I had a nice ice-cream sandwich (‘sandwich’ as in, ice cream on a slice of bread) somewhere during that last hike. And after my final despair I sat down at a mall food court* to have some papaya juice and within a few minutes a woman pushed a dim sum cart up next to me and provided an un-sought-for snack. And, admittedly, I probably passed about 80 foot-massage operations over the course of my day, so it’s my own fault for not taking it even easier than I did.
Anyway, now I’m back at the marina, and facing my last laundry option:
That’s been in my bathroom all along, but when I moved in I was advised against using it, for reasons that will become clear. These are desperate times, though.
The feed line is even more broken at the other end — it’s impossible to hook up without torrential leaks. Solved by dragging the washer into the shower stall and filling the tub with the shower head.
Home-spliced power plug. It came with the place!
When you live on a boat you don’t need a laundry tub, just a window.
Door propped shut with a table just in case things go horribly wrong.
OK, turns out that I can’t drain out the window because the washer doesn’t have a pump and only drains with gravity. By this time the washer is in the shower anyway — hope that none of the electronics are close to the ground!
So, that all worked pretty well. I even have these special clothespins that are made for clipping things to a railing. I’ve been using them for weeks to hang up my swimsuit and towel, but today they decided to be dramatic — a few minutes after hanging up my socks I heared some springy/snappy sounds and found that the clothespins had failed and broken and (in some cases) leaped overboard. So far my clothes have remained out of the drink though.
* This food court was on level B4 of a shopping center. That’s two stories below the subway line and a good 60 feet below sea level. Is that a normal city thing?
